


the secrets we keep, they run wild when we sleep

by actmademoiselle



Category: Black Sails, Inception (2010)
Genre: Black Sails x Inception, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Other, Thomas doesn't actually appear but will get mentioned later on, just trust me on this, max is smart and we respect her, miranda knows her way around a gun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-27 04:30:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20942315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actmademoiselle/pseuds/actmademoiselle
Summary: James Flint and Miranda Barlow are one of the most known couples in the dreamshare world. They've reached the top of the extraction business and no one can shake them off it, no matter what rumours some of their previous collaborates might be spreading. But privately, James and Miranda are working towards gaining enough favour of influential people to override Alfred Hamilton's order; he is one of the most powerful men in the world. No one knows exactly what previous order of his it is they want overthrown. What Max knows is that James and Miranda have always been good to her and pay well, so when they accost her about joining them to extract a secret from someone she used to know, she agrees, and helps them put together the crew. Enter: our thief John Silver, who might have a hidden motive in joining the extraction.





	the secrets we keep, they run wild when we sleep

**Author's Note:**

> So I have watched Inception again recently and it is the most wonderful film and a concept that has just incredible opportunities for fanfic. I thought - who better to put in the dream share world than people who all have hidden pasts they don't want to talk about? So here we are, Black Sails characters sharing dreams. John Silver arrives soon, I promise. 
> 
> Would love to hear your thoughts, and will absolutely reply to any comments :)

Lord Alfred Hamilton was an influential, unshakable man, mostly due to the fact that his company was in charge of an unparalleled majority of the oil coming into Europe. Lord Alfred Hamilton had money enough to buy a small country, and several islands already under his name. He could and would have everything. Everybody knew this.

That was why, when Max met a man who was determined to win against Lord Hamilton, to destroy him, and who had a specific plan in mind to do so, she was drawn. James Flint had that kind of effect on people. Charm and eloquence made him a masterful extractor, a brilliant flirt, and a fantastic shield against all the rumours of his mercilessness and brutality spread by Billy Bones.

Max found very soon that when the mask came off, Flint could be incredibly cold-blooded, and spare no thoughts over what happened to his partners in the dreamworld. His reason, the first time she grabbed him by the arms and told him they had to turn back and get their forger out of the torture chamber he was just thrown into, was:

'It’s not real.'

Then he walked past her.

When the forger woke up Max watched him claw at his stomach for a minute before he realized it was not real. To Flint’s face, he was all calm business, but the second he got his money he swore to discourage as many people as he could from working with the man again. Still, Jack Rackham may have had a good reputation, but he never got hold of the work first; he always joined someone else’s team. As a result, he only had his words to convince people, no jobs to offer them instead. Flint was almost always the one to extract on the most major jobs. He offered a paycheck so high everyone forgot Jack Rackham existed.

You have to do a lot to earn that paycheck. Max has watched Flint not pay up when he thought the person was lazy, or failed, or worst of all, sabotaged them. Flint was paranoid.

Still, he paid well.

Max liked that about him.

She liked he always had clear-cut plans. She liked how he respected intelligence. She liked how he required competence. People may have moaned about his standards, but Max privately admired him for them. If you weren’t good, you weren’t paid. No matter your reputation. No matter your threats.

He went through architects, thieves and would-be-forgers like gloves, but Max was always his chemist, ever since their first job together.

‘It feels special to be on his team, doesn’t it?’ Miranda asked her one day. ‘You feel chosen. Better.’

They were sitting in a bar. The bar was in Tokyo’s business district. Max could still see Billy Bones’s back as he was walking out. It was five weeks after Rackham. He must have found Billy, somehow, because Billy already knew everything. She replayed in her head the moment her and Miranda had heard a gasp, and turned to see Bones staring at them from the bar near their booth. He stood there, gaping like a fish, before storming over to argue. Miranda stared him down and dismissed with not much more than _everyone’s about to look at us, Mister Bones, and as I remember Japan has an extradition treaty with Korea. The Park job? _Max sipped her drink.

Bones walked out. She did feel she were better than him.

‘I understand you may not feel like one of us,’ Miranda spoke over her cocktail. ‘But you are one of our dearest.’

Miranda was hunting her for a job. It was a formality, at this point, because only an idiot wouldn’t take that amount of money, and Max had yet to be frowned at by Flint. He respected competence, and he kept asking for her. Still, Max liked to be hunted down. She liked the thrill of seeing one of them waiting in her hotel lobby, in a bar she frequented, in the back of her rented car. Getting a text from anyone else, asking if she was available, was nothing compared to them.

Miranda and Flint were as close as two people could be. They were one. When they planned, they didn’t even need to speak. Max had watched them planning for countless hours, pointing and nodding the only signs they communicated with each other. They would have a plan they were both familiar with at the end. They only spoke for the benefit of others. They even shared a job - it was impossible to say clearly that Flint was the extractor and Miranda the point man, or the other way round. Flint got the job, he charmed the clients, Miranda researched and played their mark, they both had knives and guns and tactics up their shirts. They breathed with the same surety, moved with the same urgency, everything similar but their smiles. Their smiles were different. When Miranda smiled, you could fall in love with her. When Flint smiled, you were afraid for your life.

She did that job, and the next one, and then one with Vane. Rackham, it turned out, moved up in the world and became his go-to point man. They barely spoke on that job, but Max did sleep with Vane’s security, who Jack was rather eyeing up as well. She considered it good form.

Two weeks later, she got a text from an unsaved number she knew to be Miranda. It asked if she was free _ASAP, preferably yesterday_.

Max felt cheated out of her thrill. _anything for you, mon chere, _she texted back, and packed a suitcase.

From then on, no more hunts, only texts. From the way Flint looked when he off-handedly mentioned Vane on that job, Max knew exactly why. Well. Who knew loyalty was something Flint would get hanged up on. They never signed a contract.

But life goes on, and Max found different thrills for herself whenever she worked with Vane and his red-haired security.

Which is why Max hasn’t expected both of her generous extractors to be waiting in her Mombasa home when she returned to it after a terrible job which ran over by three days, and after which all she wanted was - the bottle of wine Miranda seemed to have poured out for them all.

‘Working late, dearest?’ Miranda asked while handing her the glass. She took Max’s bags from her and put them gently on the ground. ‘We were worried. We thought you were meant to have already returned.’

‘You were not as disappointed as I was, Miranda’ Max answered, keeping the thrill rising in her chest hidden from her face. ‘Word of advice - never hire Dufresne as your point man.’

Flint laughed at the idea from where he was sitting on the sofa.

‘I never would,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘Well,’ Max sipped her wine. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘We have - a task,’ Miranda started, pouring out more of the wine. ‘We’re looking for the best.’

‘What’s the ask?’ Max said, because as much as it thrilled her to be hunted again, what she needed was sleep, and for that both of her guests had to leave.

‘It’s not exactly a monetary pursuit,’ Miranda took a step back. ‘I told you once, we consider you one of ours -’

‘For all that is holy, Miranda!’ Flint stood up. ‘You’re not getting to the point this way.’

Max had to use all her experience not to change her expression or drop the glass she was holding. Flint was looking at her, and he looked scared. Of her. Whatever it was he was going to ask, it terrified him. She has seen him get kicked to death by an angry mob in someone’s consciousness more than once, and then wake up only mildly annoyed. But whatever this was, it terrified him.

‘We’re going to extract from Eleanor Guthrie,’ Flint said.

And there it was.

It sat on the floor, like an ugly child no one wanted to admit was hideous.

‘You should get a different chemist, mon cherie,’ Max managed to say. ‘You don’t want me to slip and accidentally sedate Ms Guthrie into limbo.’ She needed a cigarette, a pack of them. A carton.

‘What we’re going to look for in her mind,’ Flint continued as if uninterrupted. ‘Is going to be personal to all of us. The knowledge we will take out of there will be of incredible significance to me, to you, but will also have a significant resale value. I cannot allow anyone within a foot of this project who I wouldn’t trust with my life.’ He said the last words as if he were pushing a rock out of his lungs through the throat and out of his mouth. He said them and he will never repeat them again in his life, not to Max, not with what it means that he asks Max to join them.

‘What are we looking for?’ Max asked, because there was nothing else she could do after that. _It feels special to be on his team. Chosen. No one who I wouldn’t trust with my life._

‘The number of her father’s pacemaker.’

‘So you can hack it.’

Silence.

‘So we can hack it,’ Miranda confirms.


End file.
